Fox News star Tucker Carlson broke with President Donald Trump’s campaign, calling the presidents recent attacks on Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden ineffective.
Carlson called for a major shift in Trump’s campaign strategy — and warned without it, there was no hope for re-election.
The Fox News star said the president’s attacks on “Sleepy Joe” and his mental well-being have been ineffective. Carlson said the only message that will work is the “America First” strategy Trump used to win an improbable victory in the 2016 general election.
“America deserves better” than what voters saw at the Tuesday debate. He called it “depressing” and then focused on the political lesson that the president’s team should take away.
“It was a mistake to focus on Biden’s mental decline,” Carlson said. “If you tuned in and expected him to forget his own name … you may have been surprised by how precise some of his answers were. Not all of them, but enough of them.”
Carlson said it was time to refocus the Trump campaign strategy with just 34 days until the general election.
“Trump isn’t going to win this race by calling Joe Biden senile,” Carlson warned Wednesday night. “Nor, by the way, is Joe Biden going to win this race by calling Donald Trump a racist, as he repeatedly did last night.”
“That slander didn’t work four years ago. It will not work now,” the Fox News star said. “Because personal attacks rarely work, they rarely determine election outcomes. That’s obvious if you look at the results, but it’s easy to forget it. And many did.”
“What matters most to voters is what you do, not what you say,” Carlson continued. He urged the Trump campaign to focus on the more radical of the Democratic Party’s proposals if they win control of the Senate in the 2020 election.
Carlson went on to say that, like it or not, Biden’s calm demeanor was winning. “Tone is everything. Biden all but admitted on stage that he wanted to tear down our system. But he did it in a calm, ‘This is your captain speaking’ voice,” Carlson said. “He seemed almost reassuring, even as he hinted at revolution.”
“Donald Trump, by contrast, defended our system — a system that most people in this country support,” he said, noting that Trump’s position on things like Supreme Court expansion more closely aligned to public opinion polling compared to far-left Democrats.
Carlson then offered an unusually harsh condemnation of Trump’s debate performance
“It’s his tone that rattles people,” the Fox News star said, a surprising rebuke of the president. “Trump could make a wine list sound menacing.”
“So, in the end… amazingly, tragically, many people watching last night may have concluded that Joe Biden is the stable, steady alternative,” Carlson continued.
He called former President Barack Obama the “master” of the illusion of reasonableness, and said Biden had “learned well.”
Carlson played a segment where Biden called for a “buy American” policy, and said he was stealing the Trump campaign’s most powerful message without being challenged.
“Joe Biden stole Donald Trump’s lines. It was remarkable. How was Biden able to do that?” Carlson asked. “Well, the Trump campaign should ruminate on that question.”
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